RealtyTrac and real estate website Trulia.com found in a survey released Tuesday that just 15 percent of Americans think the housing market has recovered or will recover by the end of next year. In fact, 58 percent thought recovery would take until at least 2013.

"More and more, American homeowners, sellers and buyers are tamping down their expectations for a swift recovery in the housing market and bracing themselves for a long, slow climb back to a healthy real estate market," Trulia co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Pete Flint said in a news release.

"Government incentives have come and gone and historic lows in interest rates have done little to spur recovery," he said. " Then, as if prospective buyers and sellers needed more to be concerned about, the robo-signing issue caused a 'what's next?' fear to surface in the minds of consumers who, frankly, have lost faith in banks and their government to make good decisions."

Credit reporting agency TransUnion took the optimistic view Tuesday, predicting in its annual forecast that the share of mortgage holders at least 60 days late on their payments will fall from 6.2 percent at the end of 2010 to just under 5 percent at the end of next year. That's a decline of nearly 20 percent, double the 9.9 percent drop expected in this year.

"This will be driven by a slowly improving unemployment picture and continued stabilization in housing prices," Steve Chaouki, group vice president in TransUnion's financial services business unit, said in a news release. "While there is continued price pressure in many markets, we expect a growing number of areas of the country to experience a rise in property values along with some stabilization of values in those states and markets hardest hit by the recession."

TransUnion expects Washington's delinquency rate to drop more than 17 percent, from 4.8 percent and the end of this year to just under 4 percent at the end of 2011. It also forecast double-digit declines in the rate of mortgage delinquencies for every other state and the District of Columbia.

According to new data from the Seattle-based real estate website Zillow, the value of a typical home in the Seattle metropolitan area -- defined as King, Pierce and Snohomish counties -- was $268,700 in October, down 1.6 percent from September and 11.6 percent from a year earlier.

The typical home in Seattle itself was worth $351,800, down 0.9 percent from September and 6.9 percent from a year earlier.

Robo-signing refers to recent revelations that representatives of mortgage holders signed off on foreclosure documents they hadn't read and that often were full of errors. The RealtyTrac-Trulia survey found 35 percent of Americans think the issue will delay the housing market's recovery.

Meanwhile, 48 percent of homeowners with mortgages said they would consider walking away from their homes if they owed more than the home was worth. That's up from 41 percent in May 2010.